Jane Shattuck Hoyos produces fabulous Peach & Quiet video

Our friend Jane Shattuck runs Planet Barbados Blog and can be seen at all the usual places including Facebook and YouTube. She’s just done up a promotional video for Peach & Quiet Hotel and it is stunning in its presentation and message. Have a look for yourself above.

Both Jane and Peach & Quiet co-owner Adrian Loveridge are masters of leveraging the internet to get out their message and keep their tourist venues at near capacity.

If you own a tourism business you’d do well to watch their efforts carefully. Both Jane and Adrian work hard at promoting Barbados and their businesses on and off the net and it pays off with occupancy rates at the top of the scale. In the case of Peach & Quiet Hotel, over 80% of visitors are repeat customers!

But there is something else happening besides promotion. Could it be that Peach and Quiet Hotel does so well because owners Adrian and Margaret religiously maintain and refresh their product offerings? The video mentions that P&Q gets a facelift every year to the tune of 500 gallons of paint. What the video doesn’t mention is that we’ve seen Adrian himself covered in paint himself on a July afternoon.

There is a lesson there somewhere.

The other lesson concerns how many business owners are waiting for the Barbados Tourism Authority to promote their businesses with tax dollars and how many just forge ahead themselves being careful to get the best bang for the buck. Which ones do you think are most successful?

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Barbados Government Minister finally admits Land Approvals process is corrupt!

“Nice little field you have here. Too bad you’ll never receive development permission. Maybe we can help…”

Prevention of Corruption Bill, 2010: Will it pass before the election?

We all know how it works on this little rock. It is not the land that is valuable – it is the approval for developing the land that turns scrub into gold. The little farmer or widow owning land and paying taxes for decades will never get approval for development, so a couple of heavies visit the nothing little citizen and explain the rules ’bout hey.

“You’ll never get approval, but if you sell to us for a fraction of what the land would be worth with approvals, we’ll give you a little extra and you’ll have retirement money. You can continue to live in your little home for a dollar a year until the Lord calls you.”

So the land owner sells under duress and a few weeks later a major developer is given approvals for that same piece of land. Approvals denied for twenty years until some of the elites decided they could profit from it. “Hey… thanks for paying taxes and holding our land for us for twenty years… sucker!”